Tag / indian roads

I have a personal tiff against private buses in the city. Those jarring colors and graffiti, the blaring speakers yelling out of tune numbers, the petty boys fluttering around the bus literally bullying passerbys to get in and their extremely questionable inner decor, all give me the heebidajeebies. They lurk around every bus stop, making me always wonder what joy ride the ones on the bus are really on. What ticks me off the most are their ear drum shattering air horns that are capable of giving the weak hearted a free ticket to the hospital bed.

I am slowly but steadily turning against noise-cancelling devices of any kind. I propose a ban on ear phones, head phones, around-the-head phones, around-the-ear phones, Bluetooth ear pieces and anything else that mankind can stuff in, on or around their ears to kill out external noise.

I want every citizen of the country, traveling on its ‘well-kept’ roads, to listen to every sound that is produced around them and that they are actively contributing to. We’ve become a nation that is so comfortable listening to the nasal drone of Himesh Reshamaiyya and Justin Bieber in our ears that we fail to comprehend the levels of noise that we create on the roads. I drove by a persistent honker today, who made it seem like his car’s brakes were connected to its horn, only to find him comfortable in his air-conditioned little bubble, ear phones plugged hard into both ears. Bleeps!

A keen cyclist captures a driver using a mobile phone, a laptop and headphones while driving. Phew! Source http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Me and my ears

After spending a few significant years outside the country and after reading a little too many forwards about single women and their safety in the country, I always walk with my ears super attentive. While it would have been too easy to drown out the pains of the world in a beautiful rock ballad, there are the hidden fears lurking in your shadows that you should be aware of. I leave the rock ballads to the comfort of my home, a lavish drink and a book in hand. So, I find it extremely nonchalant on the part of those hailing a cab who sit with their ears plugged away, while their driver drives the machine of death that could give the local ambulance a beat at the race.

Bleepety-Bloopety-Blaah!

Mean, keen flying machines! Yeah, Right!

Modern day cabs and buses are the major contributors to the increasing noise levels on the road. They use theirs horns like it were a light-saber; a whoosh and they expect all their opponents on the road to vanish. Well, what if I light-saber you back? And that’s where the duel begins. Have you noticed the melee of honks that ensue the nanosecond the signal turns to green? It’s almost like they were expecting the Flying Falcons in front of them to accelerate from 0-60 kmph in 1.6 seconds and now their F-16 is denied reaching the haloed Mach 2. All that mad ravenous blaring only to go 300 meters and stall at the next traffic junction. How myopic a race have we become these days?

Blame those riders

As I think more about the growing doom, I realize that the riders are as responsible as the drivers themselves. Most of them are indifferent to the ruckus that their drivers create, and sit with a glee contentment in knowing that they aren’t the ones going to hell. Well, you know what they say about Karma, don’t you? I myself have asked my cab drivers to stop honking on a number of occasions and on two specific incidents, I’ve stopped my cabbie mid-route because of his incessant honking, rash driving and not heeding to my requests to drive sane.

Why did the honking annoy me and not these thousand other riders, you wonder? Those darned earphones, I tell you!